Swedish modelling agencies 'target girls with eating disorders'

The modelling agencies are alleged to have deliberately targeted women with eating disorders

By Agence France-Presse

6:00AM BST 19 Apr 2013

A year ago, the clinic was forced to change its procedures on walks as patients at the Stockholm Center for Eating Disorders were approached by scouts as they left the building. One girl was so ill she was in a wheelchair at the time, Dr Anna-Maria af Sandeberg told the Metro newspaper.

“We think this is repugnant. People have stood outside our clinic and tried to pick up our girls because they know they are very thin,” Dr Sandeberg said.

A number of girls approached last year were in their teens and some patients have a body max index (BMI) — a measurement of height-to-weight ratio — of just 14. A healthy adult female will have a BMI between 18.5 and 24.9.

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On one occasion, a 14-year-old girl was approached by an agent from one of the country’s largest modelling agencies but the number of outfits involved is not yet clear.

The girl’s mother confronted the agent in question and explained the seriousness of her illness.

Speaking to the TT news agency, Christina Lillman-Ringborg said: “They claimed that they approach healthy, normally slim young people and that they never urge anyone to lose weight; that’s how they defended themselves.

“I was so upset because this girl was so skinny.” The clinic aims to bring starvation, binge eating and compensatory behaviour under control before addressing the psychological factors and it is the largest of its kind in Sweden.